Lego and Sibling Squabbles | Toddling Through the Silicon Valley | Cheryl Bac | Palo Alto Online |

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By Cheryl Bac

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About this blog: I'm a wife, stay-at-home mom, home cook, marathon runner, and PhD. I recently moved to the Silicon Valley after completing my PhD in Social Psychology and becoming a mother one month apart. Before that, I ran seven marathons incl...  (More)

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Lego and Sibling Squabbles

Uploaded: Mar 31, 2019
Our family finally got around to watching The Lego Movie 2. I was not expecting to enjoy the movie, but I was pleasantly surprised. They touched on a topic that hit close to home for us - siblings rivalry.

We have two kids who are into Lego right now. And it’s not easy figuring out the best way to organize our Lego collection. We want to keep the peace while also letting both kids be as creative as possible. Should we separate their Lego collections or just dump everything together into one big bin?

My original plan was to keep their creations on display for as long as they desire. And after that, dump all of the pieces together into one big bin.

And, for the most part, one big bin of Lego works for us. Our collection of Lego pieces has gotten large enough that there are enough pieces for everyone. But it’s definitely still a work in progress.

For instance, we are starting to sort some of the pieces. All of the axels and wheels, the technic pieces, the windshields, the minifigures, etc. It's a lot easier to build a vehicle when you can easily find matching pairs of wheels.

While I love when our kids build Lego together, I know that, at least some of the time, they need their own building spaces. So, at the moment, our two older kids each have their own Lego table to create whatever they want.

Once our youngest joins the mix we’ll probably need to tweak our current system. But right now as long as both kids are happy, busy, and creating, we’ll just let them let their imaginations run wild- sometimes together and sometimes on their own.
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Comments

Posted by menlo mom, a resident of Menlo Park,
on Apr 4, 2019 at 5:34 pm

menlo mom is a registered user.

My vote is for one big bin. You will drive yourself crazy otherwise. I see your logic for keeping wheels etc separate, if your kids are small, but I am always a fan of keeping adults out of playtime and clean up time as much as possible. If your kids are on board with cleaning them up and separating them, awesome! But if it's all you, I think you're doing your kids a disservice. There's no reason the kids can't hunt for the piece they want. That's part of Legos. They may need to dump the whole bin out and sort through the pile on the floor, but if all they need to do to clean up is scoop and dump, then that's fine.

A suggestion for the finished pieces is to have a set period of time to display them, then snap a picture. You can have a "Lego Wall" where you display printed pictures of their favorites.

Of my three kids, I only had one that was an all-in Lego kid....from the time he could be trusted not to swallow them, through high school (he had a stash in his closet for stress relief.) He may still have them...and he's 24. Lego's and make-believe toys (like dolls and action figures) are my favorite toys of all!


Posted by Cheryl Bac, a Palo Alto Online blogger,
on Apr 4, 2019 at 6:19 pm

Cheryl Bac is a registered user.

Menlo mom - Thanks for commenting. Yes, it’s wonderful to see what kids can create with Lego without any parental intervention.


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